Quentin Tarantino’s lawsuit against Gawker thrown out of court

Linking to a leaked script isn't enough to sue news outlet over copyright.

In January, film director Quentin Tarantino lost it when Gawker posted links to his leaked script for The Hateful Eight. He quickly slapped Gawker with a copyright infringement lawsuit and peppered Google with DMCA takedown requests for any URL, including the Gawker article, that pointed to his script.

Yesterday, a federal judge threw out Tarantino's lawsuit, finding that the mere act of linking to the content, which wasn't ever posted on Gawker's website, wasn't enough to sustain a lawsuit. Tarantino has also sued the anonymous posters of his script directly, as John Does 1through 10.

Tarantino will be allowed to amend the complaint to try again; he has to file the amended lawsuit by May 1. But it sounds like a long shot—the judge wrote in his order that "Plaintiff has not alleged and it is highly unlikely that Plaintiff will be able to plead facts demonstrating that Defendant somehow induced, caused, or materially contributed to the infringing conduct by publishing a link to the screenplay after it was wrongfully posted on AnonFiles.com."

A brief background of the suit: On January 23, Hollywood news website The Wrap wrote that “Hollywood assistants are now promulgating a link anyone can use to download a PDF of the script that will no doubt end up online in the coming days.”

Later that day, the script was posted on AnonFiles.com and later on Scribd. Gawker soon posted an article entitled, "Here Is The Leaked Quentin Tarantino Hateful Eight Script.”

Tarantino, who had decided not to make the script into a movie, was incensed. He had only given the script to "six motherfucking people." He sued Gawker on January 27.

"Gawker Media has made a business of predatory journalism, violating people’s rights to make a buck," said Tarantino's lawsuit. "This time they went too far."

Tarantino's case was based on accusations that Gawker was engaged in “facilitating and encouraging the public’s violation of Plaintiff’s copyright in the screenplay by providing links to copies that someone else had already posted on AnonFiles.com and Scribd.com," noted US District Judge John Walter.

Encouraging people to read the script wasn't enough to show infringement, Walter wrote. He noted that Gawker didn't encourage anyone to copy or distribute the script.

"Simply viewing a copy of allegedly infringing work on one’s own computer does not constitute the direct infringement necessary to support Plaintiff’s contributory infringement claim," wrote Walter.

The state of the case against the Doe defendants isn't clear from the available records. Walter ordered any unserved Doe defendants to be dismissed earlier this month. The docket doesn't indicate that anyone was served, so the whole lawsuit may not be long for this world.